The Hour of the Dragon
thousand Aquilonians, barons and their retainers.
It was a strong position. His flanks could not be turned, for that would
mean climbing the steep, wooded hills in the teeth of the arrows and
swords of the Bossonians. His camp lay directly behind him, in a narrow,
steep-walled valley which was indeed merely a continuation of the Valley
of Lions, pitching up at a higher level. He did not fear a surprise from
the rear, because the hills behind him were full of refugees and broken
men whose loyalty to him was beyond question.
But if his position was hard to shake, it was equally hard to escape
from. It was a trap as well as a fortress for the defenders, a desperate
last stand of men who did not expect to survive unless they were
victorious. The only line of retreat possible was through the narrow
valley at their rear.
* * * * *
Xaltotun mounted a hill on the left side of the valley, near the wide
mouth. This hill rose higher than the others, and was known as the
King's Altar, for a reason long forgotten. Only Xaltotun knew, and his
memory dated back three thousand years.
He was not alone. His two familiars, silent, hairy, furtive and dark,
were with him, and they bore a young Aquilonian girl, bound hand and
foot. They laid her on an ancient stone, which was curiously like an
altar, and which crowned the summit of the hill. For long centuries it
had stood there, worn by the elements until many doubted that it was
anything but a curiously shapen natural rock. But what it was, and why
it stood there, Xaltotun remembered from of old. The familiars went
away, with their bent backs like silent gnomes, and Xaltotun stood alone
beside the altar, his dark beard blown in the wind, overlooking the
valley.
He could see clear back to the winding Shirki, and up into the hills
beyond the head of the valley. He could see the gleaming wedge of steel
drawn up at the head of the terraces, the burganets of the archers
glinting among the rocks and bushes, the silent knights motionless on
their steeds, their pennons flowing above their helmets, their lances
rising in a bristling thicket.
Looking in the other direction he could see the long serried lines of
the Nemedians moving in ranks of shining steel into the mouth of the
valley. Behind them the gay pavilions of the lords and knights and the
drab tents of the common soldiers stretched back almost to the river.
Like a river of molten steel the Nemedian host flowed into the valley,
the great scarlet dragon rippling over it. First marched the bowmen, in
even ranks, arbalests half raised, bolts nocked, fingers on triggers.
After them came the pikemen, and behind them the real strength of the
army--the mounted knights, their banners unfurled to the wind, their
lances lifted, walking their great steeds forward as if they rode to a
banquet.
And higher up on the slopes the smaller Aquilonian host stood grimly
silent.
There were thirty thousand Nemedian knights, and, as in most Hyborian
nations, it was the chivalry which was the sword of the army. The
footmen were used only to clear the way for a charge of the armored
knights. There were twenty-one thousand of these, pikemen and archers.
The bowmen began loosing as they advanced, without breaking ranks,
launching their quarrels with a whir and tang. But the bolts fell short
or rattled harmlessly from the overlapping shields of the Gundermen. And
before the arbalesters could come within killing range, the arching
shafts of the Bossonians were wreaking havoc in their ranks.
A little of this, a futile attempt at exchanging fire, and the Nemedian
bowmen began falling back in disorder. Their armor was light, their
weapons no match for the Bossonian longbows. The western archers were
sheltered by bushes and rocks. Moreover, the Nemedian footmen lacked
something of the morale of the horsemen, knowing as they did that they
were being used merely to clear the way for the knights.
The cross-bowmen fell back, and between their opening lines the pikemen
advanced. These were largely mercenaries, and their masters had no
compunction about sacrificing them. They were intended to mask the
advance of the knights until the latter were within smiting distance. So
while the arbalesters plied their bolts from either flank at long range,
the pikemen marched into the teeth of the blast from above, and behind
them the knights came on.
When the pikemen began to falter beneath the savage hail of death that
whistled down the slopes among them, a trumpet blew, their companies
divided to right and left, and through them the mailed knights
thundered.
They ran full into a cloud of stinging death. The clothyard shafts found
every crevice in their armor and the housings of the steeds. Horses
scrambling up the grassy terraces reared and plunged backward, bearing
their riders with them. Steel-clad forms littered the slopes. The charge
wavered and ebbed back.
Back down in the valley Amalric reformed his ranks. Tarascus was
fighting with drawn sword under the scarlet dragon, but it was the baron
of Tor who commanded that day. Amalric swore as he glanced at the forest
of lance-tips visible above and beyond the head-pieces of the Gundermen.
He had hoped his retirement would draw the knights out in a charge down
the slopes after him, to be raked from either flank by his bowmen and
swamped by the numbers of his horsemen. But they had not moved.
Camp-servants brought skins of water from the river. Knights doffed
their helmets and drenched their sweating heads. The wounded on the
slopes screamed vainly for water. In the upper valley, springs supplied
the defenders. They did not thirst that long, hot spring day.
On the King's Altar, beside the ancient, carven stone, Xaltotun watched
the steel tide ebb and flow. On came the knights, with waving plumes and
dipping lances. Through a whistling cloud of arrows they plowed to break
like a thundering wave on the bristling wall of spears and shields. Axes
rose and fell above the plumed helmets, spears thrust upward, bringing
down horses and riders. The pride of the Gundermen was no less fierce
than that of the knights. They were not spear-fodder, to be sacrificed
for the glory of better men. They were the finest infantry in the world,
with a tradition that made their morale unshakable. The kings of
Aquilonia had long learned the worth of unbreakable infantry. They held
their formation unshaken; over their gleaming ranks flowed the great
lion banner, and at the tip of the wedge a giant figure in black armor
roared and smote like a hurricane, with a dripping ax that split steel
and bone alike.
The Nemedians fought as gallantly as their traditions of high courage
demanded. But they could not break the iron wedge, and from the wooded
knolls on either hand arrows raked their close-packed ranks mercilessly.
Their own bowmen were useless, their pikemen unable to climb the heights
and come to grips with the Bossonians. Slowly, stubbornly, sullenly, the
grim knights fell back, counting their empty saddles. Above them the
Gundermen made no outcry of triumph. They closed their ranks, locking up
the gaps made by the fallen. Sweat ran into their eyes from under their
steel caps. They gripped their spears and waited, their fierce hearts
swelling with pride that a king should fight on foot with them. Behind
them the Aquilonian knights had not moved. They sat their steeds, grimly
immobile.
A knight spurred a sweating horse up the hill called the King's Altar,
and glared at Xaltotun with bitter eyes.
'Amalric bids me say that it is time to use your magic, wizard,' he
said. 'We are dying like flies down there in the valley. We cannot break
their ranks.'
Xaltotun seemed to expand, to grow tall and awesome and terrible.
'Return to Amalric,' he said. 'Tell him to re-form his ranks for a
charge, but to await my signal. Before that signal is given he will see
a sight that he will remember until he lies dying!'
The knight saluted as if compelled against his will, and thundered down
the hill at breakneck pace.
Xaltotun stood beside the dark altar-stone and stared across the valley,
at the dead and wounded men on the terraces, at the grim, blood-stained
band at the head of the slopes, at the dusty, steel-clad ranks reforming
in the vale below. He glanced up at the sky, and he glanced down at the
slim white figure on the dark stone. And lifting a dagger inlaid with
archaic hieroglyphs, he intoned an immemorial invocation:
'Set, god of darkness, scaly lord of the shadows, by the blood of a
virgin and the sevenfold symbol I call to your sons below the black
earth! Children of the deeps, below the red earth, under the black
earth, awaken and shake your awful manes! Let the hills rock and the
stones topple upon my enemies! Let the sky grow dark above them, the
earth unstable beneath their feet! Let a wind from the deep black earth
curl up beneath their feet, and blacken and shrivel them----'
He halted short, dagger lifted. In the tense silence the roar of the
hosts rose beneath him, borne on the wind.
On the other side of the altar stood a man in a black hooded robe, whose
coif shadowed pale delicate features and dark eyes calm and meditative.
'Dog of Asura!' whispered Xaltotun, his voice was like the hiss of an
angered serpent. 'Are you mad, that you seek your doom? Ho, Baal!
Chiron!'
'Call again, dog of Acheron!' said the other, and laughed. 'Summon them
loudly. They will not hear, unless your shouts reverberate in hell.'
From a thicket on the edge of the crest came a somber old woman in
peasant garb, her hair flowing over her shoulders, a great gray wolf
following at her heels.
'Witch, priest and wolf,' muttered Xaltotun grimly, and laughed. 'Fools,
to pit your charlatan's mummery against my arts! With a wave of my hand
I brush you from my path!'
'Your arts are straws in the wind, dog of Python,' answered the Asurian.
'Have you wondered why the Shirki did not come down in flood and trap
Conan on the other bank? When I saw the lightning in the night I guessed
your plan, and my spells dispersed the clouds you had summoned before
they could empty their torrents. You did not even know that your
rain-making wizardry had failed.'
'You lie!' cried Xaltotun, but the confidence in his voice was shaken.
'I have felt the impact of a powerful sorcery against mine--but no man
on earth could undo the rain-magic, once made, unless he possessed the
very heart of sorcery.'
'But the flood you plotted did not come to pass,' answered the priest.
'Look at your allies in the valley, Pythonian! You have led them to the
slaughter! They are caught in the fangs of the trap, and you cannot aid
them. Look!'
He pointed. Out of the narrow gorge of the upper valley, behind the
Poitanians, a horseman came flying, whirling something about his head
that flashed in the sun. Recklessly he hurtled down the slopes, through
the ranks of the Gundermen, who sent up a deep-throated roar and clashed
their spears and shields like thunder in the hills. On the terraces
between the hosts the sweat-soaked horse reared and plunged, and his
wild rider yelled and brandished the thing in his hands like one
demented. It was the torn remnant of a scarlet banner, and the sun
struck dazzlingly on the golden scales of a serpent that writhed
thereon.
'Valerius is dead!' cried Hadrathus ringingly. 'A fog and a drum lured
him to his doom! I gathered that fog, dog of Python, and I dispersed it!
I, with my magic which is greater than your magic!'
'What matters it?' roared Xaltotun, a terrible sight, his eyes blazing,
his features convulsed. 'Valerius was a fool. I do not need him. I can
crush Conan without human aid!'
'Why have you delayed?' mocked Hadrathus. 'Why have you allowed so many